Hi, I’m Nzola Swasisa but please call me Nzola. I was born
and raised in the DRC and in 2010 I founded Ascoderu: our
canadian-congolese NGO. Click to read more.

I’m Nzola Swasisa, and I was born and raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Because of my passion for technology, at a young age I started taking electronics communications courses.
Since then, I built an entire academic and working career in the field. For 19 years I worked for
the Christian organization Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) in 6 different countries;
DRC, Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique.

While working at MAF, I became aware of the lack of telecommunication infrastructures in rural
communities and I begun to refurbish old radio communications to help establish new communication
systems.

In the late 90’s, I started implementing a radio email system which consisted of sending emails
via radio waves. When cell phones then became popular in Africa, I decided to build an offline mobile
email server.

Between 2013-15 I went to Kinshasa in order to test
REC (Remote Email Center) and the proof-of-concept led to Lokole. Click to read more.

In 2010, I registered Ascoderu as a not for profit NGO in Canada and in the DRC with the mission
to create a web and email networking service for the communities living in the remote areas of Africa.

Between 2010-15, I worked together with Jason Cobham to built the first prototype of the offline mobile
email server, which we called REC (Remote Email Center).

In 2013 and 2015 I traveled to Kinshasa to test REC and I realized two things:

REC was a successful proof-of-concept and the targeted people validated the value of the service

REC wasn’t reliable nor user friendly enough for production.

Since 2015, Julia Grav and Mike Maloney joined my effort in order to modify and improve REC.
Together we came to the conclusion that, in order to improve reliability and accessibility, a
second generation prototype of our device needed to be built.

In 2016 Clemens Wolff (a Microsoft software engineer) and Laura Barluzzi (international development
master) also joined our efforts and with their help in January 2017 our second generation prototype
was born. We call it LOKOLE.

LOKOLE

Lokole is our custom software-and-hardware device built in early 2017.
Lokole is so tiny measuring just about 7x5cm.
Lokole is such a simple plug-and-play device that makes emails accessible to everyone.
Lokole creates a 25m radius WiFi network to access the Lokole app.
Lokole WiFi and app work under cellular coverage to minimize bandwidth costs.
Lokole is named after a traditional congolese long-distance ceremonial slim drum instrument.
Lokole is ready to change the life of many by bringing affordable emails to the unconnected!